Description
Critical scholarship recognises women’s longstanding but unacknowledged presence on the ‘front line’ (Enloe, 1988, MacKenzie, 2015) but tends to explore what it means for the servicewoman as an individual rather than considering why the military, as an organization, is invested in this myth (Sasson-Levy, 2003, Harel-Shalev and Daphna-Tekoah, 2016). A critical feminist discourse analysis, this research draws on twenty interviews with veterans from the Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR), Royal Ulster Constabulary and Women’s Royal Army Corps, combined with extensive archival material (policy documents, military records and media coverage). This paper examines how servicewomen’s war labour was controlled by the British Army, through policy direction that kept them unarmed and wearing skirts, labelled as ‘non-combatants’. The British Army employed a negotiated gender order or ‘bargain’ with servicewomen to assert control whilst permitting some individual agency to resist and subvert. In approaching the 50-year anniversary of women joining the UDR, given the scant research on British servicewomen during the Troubles, this is a timely contribution to Northern Irish history. Contributing to critical scholarship that recognises women’s presence in ‘front line combat’ as unacknowledged, this paper goes further in considering the implications of this control over servicewomen for how we understand military power.
